“What would have been done in five years is now getting done in a year or less. I think that's what we call it – the front row seat. What has happened is that digital transformation has accelerated, and that's true across the world, that's true in APJ,” stated Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies, in a media briefing held by Dell Technologies.

Before going to the APJ trends, Amit Midha first discussed how Dell Technologies has performed over the last year during the pandemic. Amit proudly announced that Dell Technologies was able to launch its PowerScale and PowerStore solutions in the first half of 2020, which helped organisations with their data and storage needs.

Additionally, Dell Technologies also launched it’s ‘everything-as-a-service’ platform Project Apex, delivering IT services to accelerate digital transformation. “These are the foundation for a lot of great things to come from us. These are built on industry-leading portfolio to help empower organisations, and we want to make sure that we are the essential infrastructure company for the data era,” Amit added.

He also mentioned that while releasing various products, Dell Technologies has also harnessed the full power of technology and expertise to make a real impact through several projects supporting different communities. This includes the Solar Learning Labs providing students access to technology and Digital LifeCare, which is giving health workers the tools to combat the rise in non-communicable diseases.

For John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer, Dell Technologies, what Dell Technologies was up to over the last year was not just about running a business. “It was absolutely about helping our customers, the big priority. Dell Technologies found itself working with almost every aspect of society as it reacted to COVID and that told us that what we do matters and the technology that we do is impactful,” he expressed.

John also talked about various trends in the APJ region for 2021, which he described a little differently since these trends are not talked about as much but are as important, or maybe even more, than the apparent predictions.
First is quantum computing, which John described as real, but viability is still many years in the future, but should be viewed as an augment to conventional compute and not a replacement. According to John, cryptography updates are beginning to protect from key management compromises enabled by scaled quantum systems, and specialised quantum programming skills can be developed via simulators or early sandboxes.

Secondly, John talked about how we are moving from the era of homogeneous compute to one of heterogeneous compute, which highlights the importance of semiconductors. He stated that enterprise use cases will dominate the technical landscape of 5G for both public and private deployment models.

Lastly, John added that public clouds and SaaS edges will become software-defined workloads and depend on edge shared platforms. Edge platforms will also become major new areas of on-premise IT capacity delivered as both product and as a service.

Ending the session, Amit said that Dell Technologies had planned various customer updates against these trends, which he believes are very much applicable in the APJ region. “The key piece is that the centre of gravity, in many ways, is moving towards Asia both from a consumerism perspective as well as innovation perspective,” he claimed.

According to Amit, Dell Technologies plans to advance its sustainability goals through its recycle and reuse approaches for its packaging. Dell Technologies is also cultivating inclusion by having a 50/50 gender representation among its workforce. With its Digital LifeCare, Dell Technologies also plans to transform 1 billion lives by 2030.

Speaking on behalf of Dell Technologies, Amit believes that technology and data, combined with the human spirit, are and will always be positive forces in the world.